Mean Season's Rising Stars

Published: Dec 21, 2007

The mean season is upon us, and no amount of schmaltzy TV Christmas cards from the presidential candidates will stem the tide.

Less than two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, poll leaders Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee took major mean shots at their chief rivals and then backed off, apologizing personally and oh so piously for, on Hillary's part, the mistakes of her campaign, and for Huckabee, a suggestion.

A Clinton campaign adviser in New Hampshire made a big deal about rival Barack Obama's teenage drug use, going so far as to wonder whether the Illinois senator ever sold drugs. The campaign proclaimed the statement was not authorized, made the adviser quit and Hillary apologized.

Huckabee, meanwhile, in an interview with the New York Times Magazine, "innocently" wondered whether rival Mitt Romney's church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, didn't believe Jesus and Satan are brothers. The former Arkansas governor later looked Romney in the eye and apologized.

Their apologies could hardly be more disingenuous. Statements meant to encourage perceptions about rivals are not unintentional. They are part of a strategy, and it says a lot about the presumed leaders that they will say what they feel they must to win. And this was all before Christmas.

Just wait 'til the day after. It's bound to get worse.